Tim Grobaty: Time to pass the hat around for the Long Beach MuniBand

PAY THE PIPERS - AND THE REST OF THE BAND: The Long Beach Municipal Band, just about the oldest glorious institution extant in its hometown, has been playing for free for more than a century. In the always elegant words of our old pal Jesse James (who apparently gave us up in the divorce; we haven't heard from him since The Troubles): Pay up, sucker.

Seriously. This city is loaded with fans of the band. On late afternoons in the summer you can see them, platoons of partyers and music-lovers trekking to the park - El Dorado, Marine Stadium, Los Cerritos, Bixby - with hampers of food and the odd illicit alcoholic beverage (served in red plastic cups, the higher-class version of a brown paper bag), along with lawn chairs and blankets, dogs and children.

For more than 100 years the Long Beach Municipal Band has been playing real good for free. No one's been hit up for cash. The band doesn't pass a hat around at its performances. Its fans have slept like babies, cozy in the thought that they are, in fact, paying the band with their tax dollars.

Well, yeah, maybe a tiny bit. There have been whispers about the city (and the state and the nation) going through some rugged budgetary misfortunes of late. Teachers, firemen, street sweepers are being laid off in huge numbers. At crunch time a trombone player doesn't look as necessary to the survival of a town as a beat cop does.

So, to wrap up our little tirade, it doesn't seem unreasonable to imagine the MuniBand, even in its tragically abbreviated form and schedule, will march on too much further into the future without some sort of extra financial help.

You can provide that and enjoy the sounds of your favorite band in a celebration of its 103 years in the music biz and to raise funds for its 2012 summer concert season.

The event is A Grand Sousa Gala, being held at 6 p.m. Friday at the Grand Ballroom of the Long Beach Convention Center, 200 South Pine Ave.

The evening will feature a concert by the Larry Curtis-led Municipal Band, featuring soprano Renee Sousa, a great-grandniece of the March King himself. Fans can dance, too, to the Studio Jazz Band with vocalists Barbara Morrison and Nicole Kubis.

And more! There will be an international buffet, casino-style gaming and a silent auction.

Your cost is a mere $100, or $175 per couple. If you want to save more (though saving money isn't really the point), grab a table for 10 for $825.

To make a reservation/donation, call 562-252-5626.

WE PUT A SPELL ON YOU: Although we have been clinically diagnosed as being scared to death of public speaking, we found on Sunday that baby steps may be the path to the cure.

That is, we found ourself OK with publicly uttering just one word at a time, with 30-second-or-so breaks between each word.

We were "guest pronouncer" Sunday at the seventh annual National Adult Spelling Bee at Bay Shore Church in Belmont Shore.

The event, organized (we hardly need to say) by Justin Rudd, attracted more than 30 spellists from all over the state and beyond who competed in the two-hour spell-off.

The opening round, for which we tossed out the words without passing out or just bolting in a stablefire manner, was pretty much a softball frame, with the most difficult word, apparently, being "toddy," which was misspelled by one bee participant who just wasn't on his game that day. (Mnemonic device: "Toddy" is like "Tim." There's only one T in it.)

Your winner, bagging the winner-take-all prize of $1,000, was Michael Petrina, of Arlington, Virginia, who correctly spelled "dossier" and "flageolet."

Second place was Patricia Knatz, of Studio City, who missed "limen" in Round 16. And third place was a tie between Janice Davis, of Garden Grove, and Lindsay Harrison, of Chico.

PHREE PHISH: Attendees of the Aug.15 Phish concert at the Long Beach Arena will get more for their money than just the live performance. They'll get a recording of the show as well.

Concertgoers will get a password entitling them to download, at www.LivePhish.com, a fully mixed soundboard release of the show just hours after the band finally stops playing.

Tickets for the show, at $60 for all seats, go on sale at noon Friday at Ticketmaster and at the Arena box office.